From the middle of the 1930s, as the official ideology turned away from internationalism, and inward, to Soviet (and Russian) society, the emphasis shifted from the socioeconomic nature of peoples to their distinct origins. From 1938, the USSRs Academy of Sciences organized intensive discussions on eth-nogenesis, and many works on the origins of the Slavs were published. Schol-ars argued that the culture of Russians ancestors had been the most developed one in Europe already in the Paleolithic era, regarding the Goths either as a tribal union whose core consisted of Slavs or simply as barbarians, and deny-ing the Vikings role in foundation of Kievan Rus.40 These scholars always referred to Marr, and their theories have been called Marrist, but they either cited only his name or quoted his words, neglecting their contexts.41 The fa-mous historian, Boris Grekov, wrote: Marr made us turn our eyes far back to the Scythians, the Cimmerians and even further, and showed that we have to search for the roots of the Slavs and other European peoples precisely there.42 Certainly, Marr had a keen interest in prehistory and antiquity, but his purpose was to explore the history of mankind and not to seek the Slavs ethnic roots! The essence of the new theory was that ethnic groups had been formed not by migrations but autochtonously on the territories they currently occupy. The key word, autochtony, was not Marrs term. The Marrist ethnogenetic the-ory was created without Marr, although it is true that Marrs ambiguous theory left room for arbitrary interpretations.43